It’s in that incredibly dynamic market that high-tech leader Lenovo must compete. When Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC business in 2005, few people outside the IT industry had even heard of the Chinese company. Today, the organization is a force to be reckoned with: top in global PC sales in 2016, with 21% market share, and third in both global tablet and global X86 server sales.

Lenovo reached this pinnacle by combining customer-focused innovation with relentless optimization of its supply chain. And the company built its innovation and supply chain leadership on the SAP HANA platform.

Real-Time Data for Right-Time Innovations

Lenovo designs, makes, and sells PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, servers, and datacenter equipment. The company is regularly cited for its innovations, such as the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro augmented-reality smartphone and Lenovo Yoga Book touch- and pen-input device, which both won CES 2018 Innovation Awards.

Lenovo powers that innovation with SAP HANA. In fact, SAP’s in-memory computing platform was actually developed on Lenovo hardware. And Lenovo reports that it’s the top provider of server hardware used for running SAP HANA around the world.

To compete and win, Lenovo puts SAP HANA to work on real-time data analytics that enable fast, accurate decisions. The company captures customer sentiment and analyzes customer feedback to predict future demand. It then speeds its innovation to meet that demand ahead of the competition.

In the past, data transfer from Lenovo’s data warehouse to its ERP system took eight hours. With SAP HANA, the company can transfer data in real time, significantly improving operational efficiencies.

“Our entire system and reporting performance have been improved by roughly 45 times,” reports Qingtong Zhou, CIO of Lenovo. “We can now look at reporting faster and analyze it faster, so we can make faster decisions.

“For our company, saving one day or even one hour will generate profits,” he continues. “That’s why SAP HANA creates so much value.”

“For our company, saving one day or even one hour will generate profits. That’s why SAP HANA creates so much value.”

Taken cost out of the supply chain, passing along the savings to customers

It’s no wonder Gartner ranks the Lenovo supply chain among the top 25 worldwide for best practices. “Our goal is to make our systems more compact, make our structure more simplified, and let our customers experience fast service,” says Michael Yao, executive director of integrated technology services for Lenovo. “SAP technology is crucial to achieving this goal.”

The IT leader also takes advantage of the SAP Hybris Commerce solution for direct sales to both B2C and B2B customers. “We use SAP Hybris Commerce to do e-commerce directly with both customers and consumers,” Zhou explains. “It provides many enhanced features, including configure-to-order and multisite features. That enables a public site for end consumers and a customized site for each large customer.”

Going forward, Lenovo and SAP will partner to bring SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud services to the Chinese market. And Lenovo plans to leverage SAP HANA and SAP machine-learning technology to remain on the cutting edge of product development. It’s just another way Lenovo will deliver innovations with the help of SAP solutions.

“Our goal is to make our systems more compact, make our structure more simplified, and let our customers experience fast service. SAP technology is crucial to achieving this goal.”

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